Austria by www.born2travel.it

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09. 08. 2001 Vienna (AUSTRIA) Here I am in the "Stephansdom" church in Vienna. What a night! I still don't know what route we took, but first a ticket inspector came in, then the Polish border police, then the Czech one, then another inspector, then the Czech again and right after the Polish, then after a while the Czech again and then the Austrian... At one point I couldn't make sense of anything anymore, I only know that I "slept" with my passport and train ticket in my hand, the very ones we'd hidden so carefully before setting off! Vienna is stunning, full of beautiful monuments from the Austro-Hungarian era. Truly very elegant and romantic! Only we were dead tired and the "marathon" from the train station to the centre, with our increasingly heavy backpacks on our shoulders, was very hard. In the evening we set off again for Bregenz. Philipp's city.

What picturesque views you get from here! So many different landscapes. So many conflicting emotions. So many different memories but always with the same spirit and the same desire to have more... always more... forever. 10. 08. 2001 Bregenz (AUSTRIA) I was looking at my beloved backpack, with all its badges, each of which seems to symbolise a war trophy! With it I've lived through three interrails, good and bad experiences. Then my beloved travel shorts. They too have accompanied me everywhere. The dirtier they are the prouder I am. My mum, when I come home after an interrail, has to wash them three times before they return to their natural colour.

I, during a trip, have never washed them, precisely because every single little stain reminded me of something, same this year: on the lower right pocket the strawberry jam stain stands out (from breakfast at the hostel in Luxembourg), on the upper right: a small dark ring brings back to mind another breakfast (on the Helsinki-Tallinn ferry, when I forgot a small packet of butter in the pocket which then melted, leaving me its signature!)... In a few days of adventure travel, in contact with ever-different people and situations, you learn more things than you could ever learn in a year shut inside the four walls of your town, city or country! Phil's house is very nice, modern and artistic. He lives here with his father. As soon as we arrive we pop into a pub for a drink, where he introduced us to some of his friends. He was all excited about our visit! 11. 08.

2001 Bregenz (AUSTRIA) Phil, who in Stockholm didn't even trust us to hold a pen of his (because of our being so outgoing, so far from their "cold Germanic" ways), has now even left us the keys to his house! In the afternoon, with Patrick and Jasmine (two of Phil's friends we met last night), we went to have lunch in Germany! Yes indeed, Bregenz is four km from the German border and 50 from Liechtenstein. Right after we went to visit Lake Constance, at Lindau. We saw the famous airship "Zeppelin NT" in flight! We had a great time. What struck me in particular was Patrick's civic sense, a great lover of the environment! When he had to throw something away he had no scruples at all: wherever he was and whatever he had in his hand, he threw it on the ground! Whether he was on the shore of the clean Lake Constance or in the centre of Bregenz made little difference.

The feature of this lake is that with one glance you could admire three countries at once: Switzerland, Austria and Germany! [Pedro Daniel Aguiar Lopes from Porto, Portugal]: "You just have to enjoy the ride"! I think all the people of the world should be obliged to try an experience like this... You see the world in its best light. You see colours no one has ever seen, you hear sounds never noticed before, you reach a level of sensitivity impossible to define. Suddenly you find answers to everything there is in the world, there's a global knowledge of life. I felt in a certain sense the person I would have liked to be. I reached peace. There are no problems, only solutions.

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